SO THE Oriental storm god went back into the world of everyday, to look for his old shrines upon Sinai and Horeb: and Gerald was happily rid of a future subject whom, he could not but feel, it would have been a bit awkward to have as a subject. And the evening passed tranquilly, although it seemed to Gerald that Theodorick was rather moody and quiet after his christening.

But it was not until the next day that Theodorick, just after breakfast, spoke with a voice which seemed to Gerald not quite the voice of a child: and Theodorick told his parents he wanted to go down into Antan.

Gerald was troubled. Yet he suggested, with very careful levity, “If—?”

“If you please,” the but half-smiling, ugly, so dear brat now added, docilely.

“Why, it must be as your father says,” Maya replied. She had paused in her sweeping off of the porch, and for a moment she held the broom slantwise as she meditated over the boy’s notion. “But, for one, I see no great harm in your having a little outing, for I will put a protection on you. Only, you must promise to be back in good time to have your face and hands washed for supper.”

Gerald said forlornly, “But what are those small yellow things you are sweeping from the porch, my dear?”

“They are fallen leaves from a sycamore-tree, left here last night by that wind, Gerald: and I really do wish you would not ask such silly questions, when I was talking about something quite different.”

“But that means summer is ending, Maya. It means an end of all growing. It means that not anything now will become any larger or more lovely.”

“Upon my word, but I never did hear of any such nonsense as you do talk sometimes, for a grown man, Gerald, as if summer did not always end!”

“That is it, precisely. It always ends: and the warmth and comfort of it perish. Yes, there is death in the air. I do not find that cheering. And that is all, my darling.”

“Why, then, Gerald, if you are quite through with that up-in-the-air sort of talking—which may be very deep and clever indeed, only I happen not to understand it, and certainly have no wish to,—why, then, I was asking you about something entirely different.”

“Oh, yes, you were speaking of Theodorick! Well, boys do get restless without any playmates, I suppose. I will talk to him about his notion while you are making up the beds.”

Nothing could have been more prosaic. Yet Gerald was troubled. He could hear Maya inside the cottage, already thumping at the pillows. All about him seemed matter of fact, and comfortable, and familiar, and stable. And yet everything, as he somehow knew, was about to change. There awoke in him as yet no real unhappiness, but just a faint uneasiness mixed with resentment, now that he noted the fall of the first leaf in autumn, and knew he was powerless to stay the beginning change in everything about his small, snug home.

THEN Gerald followed the child down to the roadside. And they talked together under the chestnut-tree, just where Gerald had talked with so many strange beings who had passed beyond Mispec Moor in that continuous journeying toward Antan.

First Gerald performed that needful rite which would reveal the truth. The child watched quietly. By and by Theodorick began to smile. But he said never a word until his father was through with these droll doings.

Then Gerald questioned his small son. Theodorick replied. The appearance of a little child still sat there, and the soft red lips of a child were moving, but that curious tongue which was like a small white serpent was speaking about matters never known to any child.

No one of Gerald’s excursions into the darker magics had prepared him for what was now in part revealed. Something of the spaces outside the world apparent to human senses Gerald knew, and of the realms beyond Earth’s orbit he, as a former student of magic, was not ignorant. But now he understood from what remote abyss his wife had drawn the being which seemed his child: a bit unwillingly, he could even surmise with what kind of enchantments Maya had fetched this seeming into the happier superficial world which is apparent to human senses.

And Gerald was moved: he was, as so many husbands have been, before and since, now almost frightened by this glimpse of the unswerving and whole-hearted and unscrupulous love which women nourish for that man whom marriage has given them to look after. He was not worthy, he contritely felt, of being thus idolized and of being coddled at the fearful price of such unearthly indiscretions. And Gerald was sincerely touched, now that he comprehended to what lengths Maya had gone to gratify his whim of wanting a son, out of hand. She had warned him, too, that he was contriving for himself grief. Yes, her womanly intuition had, somehow, foreseen that to which all his cleverness had been blind. And yet, even so, Maya had not denied him his desire, because poor Maya pampered him in everything, to the accompaniment of a commentary howsoever tart.

And Gerald thought too of how, a moment since, his worst dread had been that the boy was an illusion. He looked at his beloved son, knowing now what inhabited that freckled and droll, sturdy little body. The boy had of a sudden become strange; he was now a threat of unimaginable danger, and a creature worse than evil: yet Gerald knew, with a dull wonder, that he loved Theodorick Quentin Musgrave even now....

Gerald by and by put yet another question to this dreadful parody of a child’s innocence and helplessness, to the being whom Gerald invoked as Abdel-Hareth.

“But I have served her purpose,—my father,” the child replied, with a rather perturbing smile. “Oh, but I know! She has had many husbands. Most of them desired a son. I have always been that son.”

Then, after an instant of silence, the being who was speaking through the child’s dear lips told of the bonds from which the Midianite storm god’s touch and absolution had released him. Gerald found this part of the story particularly unpleasant. And Theodorick Quentin Musgrave, whom Gerald still addressed as Abdel-Hareth, went on to tell why he must now go downward into Antan, to encounter, not the Master Philologist, but Queen Freydis.

Gerald asked, What was needed of Queen Freydis? The child told him. Then Gerald shivered. He felt, if only for the instant, physically cold and nauseated. Still, that this creature should desire to return to its unearthly home was natural enough.

“I comprehend,” said Gerald. “I comprehend a great deal which was unknown to me ten minutes ago. I confess to being surprised by much that I have learned from you. Nevertheless, my son,—if you will pardon the force of habit, sir, and the love I had for my own little, so dear son—! But I drift into emotional remarks which would be wholly out of place. My voice, as I note with sincere regret, evinces a distressing tendency—”

Gerald paused. He gulped. He spoke now in a voice that was light and high-pitched and rather hysterical.

“In fine, my dear Abdel-Hareth, as you see, I incline somewhat to blubber like a badly whipped baby. I can but ask you to respect the emotions of a suddenly bereaved parent, without bothering to understand his confused utterances. No: you have given me my desire, and my great happiness. A part of that dies now. But I have had it, utterly. I am content. I will see to it that you, in your turn, sir, get what you desire.”

IT WAS after using his handkerchief a bit that Gerald returned to Maya. Nor did it surprise him she had already prepared a neatly wrapped up lunch for Theodorick Quentin Musgrave to be eating that day in Antan.

Gerald said, with painstaking carelessness, “Well, my dear, after talking the matter over, I have decided we may as well let the boy go.”

“Why, to be sure!” said Maya. “And a great deal of bother, too, there has been made this morning over nothing, as if I did not already have quite enough to bother me!”

And with that, she summoned from among her enchanted geldings the handsomer of the pair who formerly had been emperors.

“For a child of mine must go in proper state,” said Maya.

Then Gerald said: “No. An imperial steed is well enough, but a divine steed is better. Let him take Kalki!”

“Now, really, Gerald, your unreasonableness sometimes surprises even me! For you know perfectly well that Kalki is your own horse, and that you will be needing him yourself when you ride down to the appointed kingdom you are always talking your stuff and nonsense about.”

Gerald looked at her for some while. He was conscious of a hushed great exultation that in a world wherein all else seemed doubtful and unstable he had, somehow, through blind luck, won to his Maya and her snappishness and her unswerving and whole-hearted and quite unscrupulous love for him. She was not pretty, she was not brilliant, she was not even easy to live with. But Gerald knew now that he and this woman were one person; and that any living without Maya would be a maimed business; and that there could be nothing in Antan which could conceivably content him for the loss of this dear, ever-wrangling, dull-witted woman.

Then Gerald said: “But it is prophesied that the power of Antan shall pass to the rider upon Kalki. No harm can befall the rider upon Kalki. So we will let—we will let our son take Kalki. For in this way we will secure his protection, and we will remove the one chance of my ever leaving you, who are worth all the kingdoms that have ever been.”

Maya said, “But—”

Gerald, smiling, replied, “Nevertheless!”

Then the illusion called Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was lifted up by Gerald to the back of Kalki, and it was Gerald who adjusted the stirrups for his successor upon the divine steed. And the seeming of a child rode down toward the goal of all the gods, a rather quaintly pathetic little figure perched up there so high upon the back of the huge shining stallion.

Gerald watched the two pass out of his sight. His arms lifted after them ever so slightly. His arms seemed to ache as he recalled the feel of that small body and the warmth and yieldingness of it, which were now lost forever. Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was only an illusion contrived by forces which it was not comfortable to think about. Gerald knew that now with certainty. And it did not matter. Nor did it cheer him to reflect—as he did,—that he was in no worse case than all other fathers, no one of whom might ever retain the child that was little and helpless, and was loved for no reason at all, as nobody could quite love the hobbledehoy thumping schoolboy or even the estimable young man into whom that warm and yielding, sturdy, so small body might develop....

Then Gerald turned to Maya. “I have only you. But that which I have suffices me. I have been lucky, O my dearest, very far beyond my merits.”

She was regarding him with a sort of troubled fondness; and her speech now was hardly snappish at all. “You really are, my poor Gerald, quite too ridiculous about the child! You talk, you actually do talk, as though he were not ever coming back,—and in good time for supper, too, unless he wants a spanking.”

At that, Gerald raised a protesting hand. “Do you not trick me into optimism, also! Too much ambition and high dreams and that which was perhaps divine have now departed forever. The illusion which you created to be our son has departed, forever. But use and wont and a great deal of honest love remain. I do not say these things are heroic. I do say that these suffice. So do you let the strong bonds which are about me content you, my darling, without wreathing them in the paper flowers of optimism.”

“But are you, also,” Maya said, “content?”

Gerald answered: “I am well content. Day in, day out, let there be between us faith, and aid, and a great fondness, O my dear, and no parting! For I am content and very contrite. I know that any life without you would be a maimed business. I know that I desire only to continue in our quiet way of living upon Mispec Moor. For the middle way of life is best. What need have I to be a god or to be seeking unfamiliar places so that I may rule over them? That way is troubled, and too full of noise and striving. It is better to be content. It is better to be content with the dear, common happenings of human life, shared loyally with the one woman whose love for you is limitless and does not change, for all that it is blind to none of your failings; and to know that these things are enough and very far beyond your deserts; and not to be insanely hankering after any more high-hearted manner of living which is out of your reach or, at any rate, is attained through more trouble than it is probably worth. Ah, yes, the middle way of life is best.”

“At least it is some comfort,” Maya said, “to hear you talking almost sensibly.”

Then she reached up, still with a grave and rather tender smiling upon her beloved, homely face; and she took away from Gerald’s eyes the rose-colored spectacles.

“In fact,” said a male voice, “the woman’s task is ended.”

FOR now had come to them, traveling back from Antan, the brown man. This brown man came, he said, to summon Maya to her appointed task of transforming yet other men into domestic animals.

“—For women,” he said, also, “have always their fond task and their beneficent labor. Here, I repeat, the woman’s task is ended. But yonder many men go untamed and unbroken to the sane ways of compromise.”

Then Maya a bit absent-mindedly assented, as she put away those spectacles of hers for future use, that, in point of fact, she supposed she had done everything that was actually necessary in Gerald’s case, although nobody ever would really know what a trial he had been to her.

And Gerald for one instant looked at his wife. He found in his wife’s face that which it is the doom of most husbands to find there at one time or another. And it caused Gerald to laugh a little.

“Nevertheless,” Gerald said, quietly, “I am Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and the Preserver, the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones. I am Lord of the Third Truth, in this world which knows of only two truths and of the compromises which they beget.”

The brown man greeted that with a thin smile. “You have been long expected. Oh, very long have scepticism and despair, with somewhat varying voices, invoked your name, saying, ‘Who will overthrow the Master Philologist!’ ”

“Well, and now,” said Gerald, with the outline of a swagger, for he was getting himself more in hand, “now that prophecy is about to be fulfilled, for I am Hoo, and none other.”

“But, really, friend, I do not see how you can be an interrogative pronoun.”

“To a god, and more particularly to a Dirghic god, all incarnations are possible. There is no reason whatever why I should not be an interrogative pronoun. It is merely a matter of divine election.”

And the brown man civilly inclined his grave brown head, as he remarked:

“Do you have it your own way! Indeed, my people have very often derived their deities from less promising locations than the pages of a grammar. And upon the whole, your epiphany is most gratifying. For I try to keep my people content: yet it has been lamented, from the beginning, that no mythology revealed a god who might answer that word which the Master Philologist speaks to all the gods of men. And so, between despair and scepticism, those of my people who were so unwise as to exercise their minds in fields wherein thinking does not make for happiness, have very long been saying, ‘Who will redeem the goal of all the gods of men from the Master Philologist?’ Now it appears that this word also has become flesh; and that this interrogative pronoun Who? stands here before us. Yes, I consider that quite gratifying; for it is desirable that the sceptical and the despairing also should be contented, by being justified in their faith.”

“You quibble,” Gerald replied, “you quibble very tediously and frivolously, in the divine presence of a god who is about to take over his appointed kingdom, and to make known that Third Truth which is not known upon Mispec Moor, where the one teaching is that we copulate and die.”

“But uncelestial common-sense has always been my failing. So I must tell you, friend, that it seems to me, now that you have abandoned the Redeemer’s steed to a small freckled illusion, Antan has nothing to expect even from the mysterious awfulness of an interrogative pronoun. And yet, for one, I abandoned the place when your dwarfed deputy approached it—”

“And you acted wisely, sir,” Gerald replied, with simple dignity. “No matter how potent may be the impious sorceries of the Master Philologist, a child has entered into his domain, fearing nothing and loving all. The fact that the powers of evil cannot prevail against this conjunction is well known to every citizen of the United States of America.”

But the brown man still seemed rather moody. “I cannot say.... No, you and my friend Jahveh have, between you, loosed against Antan a power which is not of my kingdom. I therefore do not pretend to say what may come of the experiment. I merely await with lively interest, and at a reassuring distance, the upshot of this experiment, now that—of all the beings from beyond Earth’s orbit,—Abdel-Hareth has been deputed to ride upon the Redeemer’s steed.”

“And, in any case, it is always very certain, dearie,” Maya said, “that no real comfort can ever come of such foolish notions as I have ridded you of a little by a little. And in exchange for those toplofty dreams, I have trusted you as far as seemed expedient, and I have given you all that was really good for you. I have given you a season of content and every wholesome joy of domesticity now for some thirty years of mortal time. No man gets more from life, my poor dearie. None attempts to get more without ending in disappointment and discontent: and so no sane man tries to get any more than you have had. And the end finds even the most wise and reasonable son of Adam—though, to be sure, that is not saying much,—if he but lives rationally enough to survive all thirty of those quiet happy years, with a wife who is just as I am, whatever she may have seemed to begin with.”

Gerald saw, without any grief or horror, that he had now lost both his child and his wife. For Maya had become old. She was again the shrivelled and wrinkled creature, red and inflamed and hideous among her tousled tresses, that he had first found upon Mispec Moor. And fleetingly he reflected that she spoke the truth: all women, howsoever dear and beautiful, did become like that, provided they did not first die and become even more repulsive carrion.... But Gerald lacked time to discuss these generalities just now: for he had been looking toward Antan....

“To this chatter about domesticity and pessimism and content,” Gerald replied sternly, “I answer that the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones is above all aphorisms. I answer that I am Hoo, the Lord of that Third Truth whose nature is unknown to you. Now that Third Truth is loosed. Do you look now upon Antan!”

The woman and the Adversary had turned when Gerald pointed, quite as majestically as though he knew just what he was talking about. In the midst of Antan they could see, as Gerald had already seen, a flaring green flame. Now this great flaming sunk earthward, much as the waters of a fountain descend; the flame spread evenly to every side, sweeping outward in an ever-widening circle; and now this flaming was no longer green, but red and glowing. You saw this flood of fire pass equably and swiftly, surging outward toward the horizon, where at once the mountains collapsed and disappeared. All that remained was flat and black and bare. Antan no longer existed.

It was from such a miracle that the woman and the Adversary looked back toward Gerald, with every sign of sincere respect.

And Gerald’s bewilderment was rather more profound than theirs. He could surmise only that the dreadful being to whom he had given Kalki had held to its plan, as voiced by the lips of a child, and had loosed elemental fires of a nature incomprehensible to Gerald, since they were drawn from beyond Earth’s orbit. Yet that seemed to Gerald no real reason for marring a fine attitude or for failing to preserve his self-respect before the woman and the Adversary. Tricked he might have been: that was a wholly different thing from ever admitting that he had been tricked. Gerald knew at least that the illusion which had appeared to be his son had entered the perhaps equally illusory place where Gerald now might never enter; and that, whatever had befallen the best loved but one of his illusions, the rider upon the silver stallion had destroyed Antan. And it seemed obvious, too, that Abdel-Hareth had returned homeward....

Therefore Gerald claimed with a clear conscience the miracle which Gerald had, in fact, actually performed, at one remove. And Gerald kept his long chin, resolutely, well up....

“So that,” observed the brown man, quietly, “that is the end of Antan. I do not complain.”

“I had forgotten,” then said the wrinkled old woman who had been Maya of the Fair Breasts, “I had forgotten how wilful is that Abdel-Hareth who got his being upon Earth from me. Something of this sort was to be looked for, the first moment that the headstrong wretch was freed from my control. Still, Jahveh has gained less than we have gained through Jahveh’s meddling. Abdel-Hareth has served me even at the last by removing Antan from the horizon. Earth will be quieter now; and my daughters will not be so hard put to it to keep men in reasonable order.”

“I forget nothing,” the brown man remarked, drily. “And so I did not await the coming of your first-born in the likeness of a child whose fearless innocence surmounts all evil. For it was the seeming of a little child who rode up against Antan, you conceive, with every appearance of that faith against which the snares of no sorcerer and of hardly nine women in ten can prevail. Such innocence is a quite dangerous counterfeit. For one, I do not meddle with it nor with any other unearthly phenomenon. I have my realm. It suffices me.”

The woman asked, “But what, what, Janicot, do you suppose has happened?”

“How shall we ever know, dear Havvah, when manifestly there are no survivors of that happening? Antan, in any case, is no loss to us.”

Here Gerald broke in upon their talking; and Gerald shook at them his red head lordlily.

“You little creatures guess in vain at the means which I have employed. And equally in vain will you supplicate me to reveal those means. For I shall tell you nothing. It is sufficient that the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones has accomplished the mission of his tenth incarnation with a thoroughness not customary in interrogative pronouns. I came to redeem my appointed kingdom from the rule of usurpers. I came as the Lord of that Third Truth which is unknown to those who teach only that we copulate and die. That Third Truth has been loosed. No, I shall tell you nothing of its nature, for you are not fit to comprehend the Third Truth. But the mightiness of it your own eyes have witnessed. So Antan is now redeemed—”

His voice broke here. But Gerald presently continued:

“Antan is now redeemed at a great price. That woman and that child to whom my heart was given have perished. I remain. I know that these two were illusions. Nevertheless, I remain. There is no bond upon the Lord of the Third Truth to be happy: there is a strong bond upon every Helper and Preserver not to evade the full discharge of his mission. What, you may ask of me, is the mission of the Lord of the Third Truth? And I will reply to you out of my divine wisdom. It is the mission of the Lord of the Third Truth, howsoever he may palter or struggle against his doom, to destroy that which he most loves.”

NOW Gerald sat with his head bowed. He heard a talking between the old woman who had been his Maya and the brown man who was the Adversary of all the gods of men.

“What is it men desire?” said the woman. “My daughters prepare for them fine food and drink, my daughters see to it that their homes are snug, and at the end of each day my daughters love them dutifully. All things that men can ask for, my daughters furnish them. Why need men cherish strange desires which do not know their aims? for how can any of my daughters content such desires?”

“I also marvel at the desires of men,” replied the Adversary. “I, too, am ready to accord whatsoever a man can ask for sensibly and in plain words. I, who am the Prince of this world, remain a generous and ever-indulgent monarch. I will to make my people happy. My curious opulence awaits at every hand to afford my subjects whatsoever they can ask. But men want more. They desire that which was never in my kingdom. They have followed after impalpable gods: they have been enamored of phantoms. They have believed that their desire was in Antan, in part because they did not know what was their desire, and in part because they did not know what was Antan. Yes, it is well that Antan has perished.”

“This world is well enough,” the woman said. “It is well to be born into this world of an ever-loving mother. It is well to be a young man in this world wherein one may follow after young women and be cherished by them. There is soft living in this world when you have come as near discretion as men ever get and have had the wit to find a wife to take care of you. And at the end it is well to fare out of this world quietly and incuriously, with a deft-handed woman to nurse you and to wash your body afterward. But men want more.”

“This world is very good. My kingdom is a wholly sufficing kingdom,” agreed the Adversary. “The wise man, as goes human wisdom, will be content with the inexhaustible goodness of those material things which all are mine. For the five senses are an endless comfort; the five senses are an endless store of anodynes. A man may purchase bodily ease and a drugged brain with his five senses. But men want more.”

“So they have passed beyond my daughters,” the woman said. “One by one, a many have passed, perversely and so lonely, from all my daughters could contrive to content them: and one by one a host of demented romantic men have struggled toward Antan, and toward what befalls all mortals and immortals there. Yes, it is very well that Antan has perished.”

“One by one,” said the Adversary, “they have derided my kingdom. They have followed after impalpable gods. These gods passed futilely. But they drew many of my subjects from me, all to be lost forever in that beguiling Antan.”

“Men are great fools, and my daughters can hardly hamper their folly. That which my daughters can do they perform willingly. But not all men could my daughters preserve from the madness which drew men toward Antan and into ruinous desires to judge the goal of every god. At last, Antan has fallen: it is very well.”

The Adversary said, more leniently: “Men are, beyond doubt, great fools. But they are my people; and those that I can save I save. Yet many evade me. And their dreaming troubles all my realm and me, too, they trouble now and then. But Antan has fallen: and after that foolishness at least my people will not be following any more.”

“The daughters of Eve are not troubled now and then, they are troubled at every moment, by the dreams of men. Such of these blundering men as fond and eternal laboring may save, my daughters win away from their toplofty dreams. But the work is hard; the work is endless; and our losses are many.”

And then the Adversary said: “We two who began in the Garden to contrive for the happiness of men, and to be speaking always for the real good of men,—yes, certainly, our work is hard and endless. For men stay romantically minded creatures who aspire beyond my kingdom. Yet we do not despair.”

WHEN Gerald raised his head he was alone on the naked moor, for the brown man had departed, and Maya had gone away with the first of all her lovers, and her illusions had vanished, including the neat log and plaster cottage. And mists were creeping up from the ruined kingdom of Antan, in billows of ever-thickening gray which seemed to be the smoke from that great burning.

Then Gerald said:

“I have come out of my native home on a gain-less journeying with no profit in it: yet there has been pleasure in that journeying. I do not complain. Let every man that must journey, without ever knowing why, from the dark womb of his mother to the dark womb of his grave, take pattern by me!

“For all that every pleasure is departed from me, I have had pleasure. I do not grieve because I have gained nothing in my journeying. The great and best words of the Master Philologist stay unrevealed; that supreme word which was in the beginning, and which will be when all else has perished, I may not surmise: but I have played with many words which were rather pretty. In the art of magic which I chose to be my art I have performed no earth-shaking wonders, yet in small thaumaturgies I have had some hand. I did not ride the divine steed to my journey’s end: but a part of the way I rode quite royally.

“That which I heard of from afar I have not won to in my foiled journeying. So I now cry farewell to that Queen Freydis whom, I suspect, I might have loved with a great love if lesser women had not solicited me. I cry farewell to the Mirror of the Hidden Children in which, I believe, I might have found myself as I am, and might have come to knowledge of the Third Truth. And I cry farewell to Antan, to that never-won-to goal of all the gods which was, I think, my appointed kingdom. I have surmised high things. I have gained none of them. My doom has been a little doom. It contents me.

“I may well be content, because all that a man may hope for I have had, who have learned at least that the lot of a man is more sure than the lot of any god. For the deceit which you put upon me, O venerable and subtle Æsred, I cry out my gratitude. There was the seeming of a home and of a woman who loved and tended me and of a child. I may not speak of my love for these illusions. Now they have perished. But my memories remain: and they are more dear to me than is any real thing.

“All, all, is perished! It may be that I have offended the two truths which I did not esteem sufficiently august. And I who willed to be Lord of the Third Truth have found no third truth anywhere. I have found only comfortably colored illusions. But I am content with that which I have found here upon Mispec Moor.”

In the while that Gerald had been speaking, the mists rose thicker and thicker from destroyed Antan. He had noted in the while that he spoke how the first wavering thin billows crept tentatively up the hills and along the roadway, creeping upon the ground, and under the low-swinging tree branches, with, as it seemed, a pre-meditated furtiveness; and then, as if emboldened by finding the way unopposed, these mists had risen up from the ground, always swiftlier, until now they had eclipsed all. Gerald, now that he ended his talking, could see nothing palpable anywhere save the little patch of intermingled stone and grass immediately beneath his feet; and about him everywhere were the cool mists, lighted with a diffused gray radiancy which seemed to come from all sides.

PART ELEVEN

THE BOOK OF REMNANTS

GERALD now was wandering among thick luminous gray mists, on a gray way which led through long quieted places. It led him to a weather-beaten pavilion of badly stained and tattered cloth which once had been flesh-colored.

Within this pavilion was a masked skeleton. The gleaming bones sat upright, and in unmarred order, in a gilded chair. A fan lay in the lap of this skeleton, a fan that was painted with the gay amours of Harlequin and Columbine, which Pierrot was observing, wistfully, through a gap in a yew-hedge: and the skeleton wore a little black velvet carnival mask, which covered all the upper front part of the skull, about the eye-sockets.

And beyond that was a castle, whose exterior was overlaid with cracked and peeling black-and-gold lacquer work. This castle was empty everywhere of any inhabitant. Gerald passed through its courtyard and about many large rooms and corridors, all hung with faded, very ancient tapestries. He encountered nobody. Then he came to the inmost tower, builded of horn, and so into the room which had been the bedchamber of the lord of that castle, and he perceived the reason why not even mice nor spiders dared to dwell in that place.

Afterward Gerald came to a dragon’s den. But the dragon was dead long ago, and the cupboards of that den were as empty as had been the castle of Vraidex, except for a pepper cruet and a salt cruet, both of time-blackened silver, and a light golden semi-circular crown inset with emeralds such as blonde princesses were used to wear in that dragon’s heyday.

Thence Gerald passed to a jousting ground, and that too was tenantless and fallen into decay. In the paved place where knights had tilted against one another lay at random nineteen broken spears and three tarnished shields. In the ladies’ gallery Gerald found only a chamber pot. The hangings of this gallery were discolored and torn, but you could yet see that these hangings had been of black cloth embroidered with small rearing silver horses.

And Gerald came also to a green pasture through which flowed unruffled a deep stream of still water. This pasture was strewn everywhere with many curious objects. He noted a crozier, and a wheel, and a camel-hair shirt, and a huge gridiron, and a copper dish containing the breasts of a young woman. He found in that pasture also a porcelain box of ointment, and a great saw, and a blue hat, and a large iron comb, which like the saw had long-dried blood upon its teeth, and a palm branch, and two enormous, very rusty keys marked with the monogram S. P.

Then Gerald passed where three crosses lay overturned.

And beyond that the way was yet more murky. To this hand and the other hand Gerald could just dimly divine the ruined porticos and domes and pylons of incredibly ancient buildings: he seemed to go among obelisks and many-storied square towers. But all was very gray and dubious. He wandered now in a cloudiness wherein not anything was indisputable.

He passed across a narrow bridge beneath which showed a dark and sluggish river. In that water Gerald could see moving, many-colored figures which were not strange to him. For Evasherah was there, and Evaine, and Evarvan, and Evadne also, smiling at him now for the last time, and he could see how notably they had all resembled one another. And yet one more woman was there, a blue-clad woman in a crown just such as Maya had worn before she became his wife, but the face of this woman Gerald could not clearly discern.

And upon the farther bank of the dark river one sat among a herd of black swine, and the eyes of all these swine gleamed meditatively at Gerald through their ragged white lashes. The man arose: and Gerald saw this swine-driver was that same young red-haired Horvendile who was Lord of the Marches of Antan.

Then Horvendile began to speak.

HORVENDILE spoke of the race of Manuel, and of the joy, and the vexation, too, which the antics of this so inadequate race had been to Horvendile. And it was of Merlin that Gerald was thinking now, for it seemed to him that here was yet another poet who did not any longer delight to shape and to play with puppets, because Horvendile was saying:

“Now I abandon a race whose needs are insatiable. For tall Manuel lived always wanting what he had not ever found, and never, quite, knowing what thing it was which he wanted, and without which he might not ever be contented. And Jurgen also, after Heaven’s very best had been done to grant him what he sought for, could reply only that he was Jurgen who sought he knew not what. And all their descendants have been like these maddening two in this at least, all seeking after they could not say what. Nobody can do anything for such a race! For their needs have stayed insatiable: their journeying has been, in every land and in every time, a foiled journeying: and in the end, in the inevitable unvarying end, each one of you treads that gray quiet way of ruins which leads hither and to no other place.”

“Well, for that matter,” Gerald said, “it seems that you too, Horvendile, have some engagement in this hog wallow.”

“I endeavor, in point of fact, to become familiar with this last stretch of limbo, against the time of my own possible need not ever to be remembered anywhere.”

“—And for my part, I came of my own choice and in self-protection,” Gerald continued, with his chin well up. “For I must tell you, Horvendile, that I have had little peace since our last meeting.”

Then Gerald (putting out of mind those attendant, very hungry looking pigs) related the epic of his journeying, without reserving anything out of false modesty, now that he talked with a confrère. He told of how he had descended into the underwater palace of the Princess Evasherah and of the orgies which he had shared in. He spoke, a bit contritely, of the amorous excesses he had been led into by the wives and the three hundred and fifty-odd concubines of Glaum during their master’s absence. With unconcealed embarrassment he told of how the people of Lytreia had endeavored to detain him in their temple, to reign there as their tribal god, because they found his nose to be so much more majestic than the idol they hitherto had worshipped. He confessed to his dalliance with the enamored Fox-Spirit. He frankly admitted that he had not behaved well in seducing Evarvan and then deserting her after her marvelous beauty had become to him an old story. He told of how Queen Freydis had come repeatedly to him with the most generous proffers of her realm and person; and he spoke of this matter with visible compunction, because he could not deny that after three or four bouts he had repulsed the infatuated poor lady rather rudely.

In fine, said Gerald, since every man ought honestly to acknowledge his own weaknesses, he could get no real peace in the Marches of Antan. So at the last he had stolen away, into this quiet, gray untroubled place, of his own accord, just to be rid of so many persons who took unfair advantage of his over-amiable and fiery nature....

And Horvendile, at the end of Gerald’s repentant narrative, observed: “I comprehend. You have been, in brief, the devil of a fellow and a sad rip among the ladies.”

“Oh, but you wrong me! Such a suspicion is very horrifying and quite unjust! No, it is merely that not even Fair-haired Hoo, the Helper and Preserver, the Lord of the Third Truth, and the Well-beloved of Heavenly Ones, is immune to over-constant temptation.”

And at that, Horvendile shrugged. “A god with so many fine titles is not to be argued with. In any case, do you be of good cheer, for even after all these regrettable amours, and beyond the mire that my swine delight in, the Princess still awaits you.”

“But in what place?” said Gerald, “and how is she called?”

“She awaits in every place so long as youth remains—”

“Upon my word, now, Horvendile, but that is the truth, and a rather plaguing truth!”

“—However, this especial Princess is called, as it chances, Evangeline—”

“Oh, come!” said Gerald, “come now, but really, my dear fellow—!”

“—And at your first sight of her you will be enraptured. For this Princess Evangeline is so surpassingly lovely that she excels all the other women your gaze has ever beheld—”

“I know,” said Gerald. “Her face is the proper shape, it is appropriately colored everywhere, and it is surmounted with an adequate quantity of hair.”

“—Nor,” Horvendile went on, with rising enthusiasm, “is it possible to find any defect in her features—”

“No: for, doubtless, the colors of this beautiful young girl’s two eyes are nicely matched, and her nose stands just equidistant between them. Beneath this is her mouth; and she has also a pair of ears.”

“In fine,” said Horvendile, with his hands aflourish above his attendant pigs, “the Princess is young, she exhibits no absolute deformity anywhere, and your enamored glance will therefore perceive in her no fault, because of that magic which in the Marches of Antan the Two Truths exercise over all vigorous young persons.”

“You very movingly depict a woman of extraordinary and, I have not the least doubt, resistless charm. Nevertheless, I cannot any longer be wandering about a place wherein there are only two truths, and where the magic of these Two Truths is forever meddling with my young body, for the gods of the Marches of Antan do not content me.”

Then Horvendile replied: “Men have found many gods. But these gods pass. They descend into Antan, and they do not return. One god and one goddess alone do not pass. They remain eternally, if but to weave eternally a mist about the seeing and the thinking of the young, and thus to secure the existence of yet other young persons within a month or so.”

“With observations to that same general effect,” Gerald answered, “I am not unfamiliar. But let us make the thing complete! Do you now voice, here in your murky pigsty, one or another long-winded restatement of the fact that time disastrously affects all organic material. You will then, I think, have summed up the entire philosophy of the Marches of Antan. Perhaps it is a true philosophy. Nevertheless, that philosophy is a morbid materialism such as does not amuse me, who am a self-respecting citizen of the United States of America. No: I had far rather play with a beautiful idea than with one utterly lacking in seductiveness. So I prefer to think that the gods and the dreams of men pass to a noble and a worthy goal—”

It was then that Horvendile sighed, a bit despondently. “Ah, Gerald, but how may you presume to speak of such matters, who did not attain to Antan?”

“My friend,” replied Gerald, affably, “I was too wise to risk any such indiscretion. No: I did not enter into my appointed kingdom; and I have destroyed it. Therefore it must remain, so long as I remain, whatever I choose to imagine it. I retain the privilege of playing with a beautiful idea, in just the proper half-remorseful frame of mind which begets the most luxuriant fancies—”

“But—” Horvendile began.

“No, my dear fellow, you are quite wrong.”

Horvendile said, “Still—”

“Yes, there is something in that, at first glance, yet it does not really touch the root of the matter.”

Horvendile protested, “I was but going to say—”

“I know! I perfectly comprehend your argument. And I admit that you phrase it forcefully. The trouble is that you are wrong in your underlying principle.”

Horvendile said, “However—”

“Yes, but not always,” Gerald stated. “For the one way for a poet to appreciate the true loveliness of a place is not ever to go to it. No, Horvendile, a poet is not to be fobbed off with facts. No matter what the surrounding facts might be, all poets from Prometheus to Jurgen have preferred a beautiful idea to play with. So a logical poet will always destroy his appointed kingdom, because in this way only can he convert it into a beautiful idea. Therefore for me, who am a poet of sorts, to have entered into my appointed kingdom would have been woefully shiftless. I would have had henceforward only one kingdom. But, as it is, I can remake the destroyed place several times a day, in my imaginings, and can every time rebuild it more beautifully. I have thus a thousand kingdoms, each one of them more lovely than the other. To-day it will be Evasherah who awaits me there, among all the splendor and the perfume and the sunlit lewdness of the most ancient East: to-morrow the sweet singing of feathery-legged Evadne will summon me to a quite different Antan, which then will be a sea-engirdled, low-lying tropic island: but the day after that, far more idyllic lures will be recalling me to that pastel-colored, pastoral and rather populous Antan which is inhabited by all the many dreams that I had in youth, and is to be made my strictly personal heaven by the pure lips of Evarvan. Whereas, upon yet other occasions,—when my turn of mind takes on a more scholastic turn,—I shall know that in Antan awaits me each paragraph of the profound, wide erudition of Evaine.... But more often, Horvendile, I shall think of yet another woman and of a boy child, who were not wonderful in anything, but who for a while seemed mine. And I shall believe that these two wait for me, in a much more prosaic Antan; and I shall know that no magic, howsoever mightier than the less aspiring dreams of my manhood, can afford to me anything more dear.... For all that one needs, Horvendile, I have had. Antan could boast of nothing more desirable, to me, than that which I have had. So now not any power can ever quell my thankfulness for those illusions which have made sport with me for my allotted while. And I cry out defiantly, among your waiting swine, in this gray place of endless ruining, I am content...!”

Then Horvendile replied: “A fool with so many fine words at his tongue’s tip, a fool also is not to be argued with. For it is a foolishness beyond any describing, to believe that Antan can be destroyed by you or by anybody else. Ah, no! your kingdom awaited you, poor Gerald: but you faltered, you fell away into domesticity,—and you talked! Now it is the Master Philologist who, through the might of that word which was in the beginning, and which will be when all else has perished, has removed your kingdom from your reach, and from your seeing, and even from your quite whole-hearted belief, forever. Now it is your only comfort to poultice your failure with such foolish phrases. And now also it is I who tell you that for such faltering and for such failure, and for such phrases, there is possible but one answer.”

Thereafter Horvendile gave Gerald a queer word of power, and Horvendile took out of his pocket a little mirror three inches square. You heard in the duskiness a flapping of small vigorous wings. Then three white pigeons stood among the swine, at the feet of Horvendile. He did what was requisite: and Gerald thus came straightway into a place which was not unfamiliar.

PART TWELVE

THE BOOK OF ACQUIESCENCE